Apple’s Steve Jobs Announces Plans for Futuristic Corporate Campus

Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance before the Cupertino City Council on Tuesday night to present Apple's plans for new, futuristic headquarters, reports Cuptertino Patch.

Apple's CEO is seeking approval to begin building new Apple offices on the Hewlett Packard property, which will be vacated next year. We want to submit plans fairly quickly, break ground next year and move in by 2015, Jobs told the council.

Jobs gave a proposal for a 150-acre, state-of-the-art campus that will have a single building for 12,000 employees. Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong said Apple paid a premium price for the land, and Jobs made it clear that no expense will be spared in the development and construction of the spaceship like building (designed by architects he described as the best in the world):

It's a circle and so it's curved all the way around. As you know if you build things this is not the cheapest way to build something. There's not a straight piece of glass on this building...we've used our experience in making retail buildings all over the world now. We know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use, and we want to make the glass specifically for this particular building here...it's pretty cool.

Considerable efforts will be spent to improve the health and appearance of the grounds, which right now are under-landscaped and asphalt-heavy. Jobs said that he plans to make about 80 percent of it landscape by putting most of the parking underground.

Apple has already hired one of the senior arborists from Stamford to help double the number of trees on the property (there are currently 3,700). The plans also include a fitness center, Research & Development facilities, and an energy center.

Jobs explained to the council that the land was special to him, relating an anecdote from his youth:

When I was 13, I think, I called up - Hewlett and Packard were my idols - and I called up Bill Hewlett because he lived in Palo Alto, and there were no unlisted phone numbers in the phone book, which gives you a clue to my age.

And he picked up the phone and I talked to him and I asked him if he'd give me some spare parts for something I was building called a frequency counter, and he did. But in addition to that, he gave me something way more important, he gave me a job that summer.

Jobs has been on 'indefinite' medical leave from Apple since January of this year, his second medical absence since his 2009 liver transplant. Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, which is considered one of the deadliest forms of cancer. However, the type he has - neuroendocrine cancer - accounts for less than 5% of pancreatic cancers diagnosed, and is significantly more treatable than the more common pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Earlier this week, Jobs delivered the keynote speech at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference and unveiled the much-anticipated iCloud service.